Patients say that there is a severe shortage of life-saving and essential medicines in all hospitals across the country, including the Colombo National Hospital, reports the Lankadeepa website. .
The ‘insulin’ that is injected by ‘diabetic’ patients is not being issued even to patients at the National Hospital’s clinics, while patients say that many essential medicines including ‘insulin’ have not been issued in other hospitals across the country for about three months.
‘People are further inconvenienced by the lack of ‘insulin’ in private pharmacies in some areas. Patients also say that patients receiving treatment at the Diabetes Clinic of the Colombo National Hospital have been advised by the medicine dispensing counters to inquire about the availability of ‘insulin’ in the hospital for about two more weeks.
Three out of 13 life-saving drugs are completely unavailable in the medical supply sector and government hospitals, while 183 out of 460 essential drugs are out of stock in the medical supply sector and 49 hospitals are completely unavailable, said Ravi Kumudesh, president of the Health Professionals’ Federation.
The National Prescription Review Committee has classified 612 drugs approved for use in government hospitals into 13 life-saving drugs, 460 essential drugs and 139 non-essential drugs, said Mr. Kumudesh. He further said that the urgent need arising from the lack of solutions to the shortage of drugs is being exploited to import unregistered substandard and counterfeit drugs.